Abstract

The purpose of the thesis is to compare Sweden's and Great Britain's total costs for their systems regulating producer responsibility for waste packages. Producer resonsibility is a strategy implying that producers are responsible for their waste also after its use. Sweden and Great Britain introduced different systems systems after an EU directive was adopted in 1994 (94/62/EC), and they have resulted in entirely different recycling levels in the two countries.
In the Swedish system, responsibility has been delegated to the industry who are responsible for reaching the determined goals. The economic instrument used is a fee, set and managed by the industry. The British system is more centrilised, and the economic instrument used to finance recycling of waste is a system based on transferable permits.
The thesis compares the four different alternatives: delegated and centralised methods, and fees and transferable permits analytically. It is demonstrated that the Swedish model (delegated system with fee) gives the most number of advantages and the least number of disadvantages. The British model, on the other hand, gives relatively few number of advantages and several disadvantages.
This work assumed that the two compared systems had the same goals to reach, i.e. the goals determined in the EU directive on Packaging and Packaging Waste. However, it was shown that the actual goals in the countries were set at different levels, which is allowed by the Directive. The thesis can therefor not conclude which system is the most cost-efficient, even though the analysis showed that the Swedish system has the most number of advantages. The larger cost in reality could be the results of higher stringency.